A Dictionary of Weather

Storm Dunlop

Description

Here is an authoritative new edition of A Dictionary of Weather containing almost 2000 definitions of weather, forecasting, and climate terms with clear explanations and illustrative examples. This fully updated edition includes 300 new and revised entries, such as A-Train Pineapple Express and Watermelon Snow, and added feature entries highlighting actual occurrences of extreme weather including the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. With black and white photos and satellite images to show weather systems, as well as recommended websites for further reading, this reference work is the most comprehensive of its kind. Find out where and when the world's largest hailstone fell or where the highest temperature was recorded using the list of weather records, and
check climate data for different weather types from around the world. Key terms from the related fields of oceanography, hydrology, and climatology are also covered as well as biographical information on important people in the development of meteorology. An essential reference for meteorology and geography students, at school or university, as well as amateur meteorologists, general readers, and all those obsessed with the weather.

A Dictionary of Weather

Storm Dunlop

Author Information

Storm Dunlop is an experienced writer on meteorology and astronomy. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Meteorological Society, and the photographic editor of the journal, Weather. He is also past president of the British Astronomical Association and has given many lectures and talks on all aspects of meteorology and astronomy.

A Dictionary of Weather

Second Edition

Storm Dunlop

From Our Blog

By Storm Dunlop
Rainfall in excessive quantities or in an unusual location may give rise to flooding ' as we have seen only too frequently in Britain in the past year ' but quite apart from such problems and its many other uses, water is absolutely essential for agriculture ' particularly in tropical countries where the onset and progress of the monsoon is anxiously awaited, and in regions where agriculture is utterly dependent on precipitation brought by the less predictable tropical cyclones ' known as 'cyclones', 'hurricanes', or 'typhoons', depending on their location around the world.

By Storm Dunlop
We are all used to blaming things (rightly or wrongly) on the weather, but now it seems that this tendency has been extended to space weather. Space weather, for those who are uncertain, describes the effects that flares and other events on the Sun produce on Earth. Consult many of the sites on the World Wide Web that are devoted to events on a particular day in history, and you will be told that on 16 August 1989, a geomagnetic storm caused the Toronto Stock Exchange to crash.

By Storm Dunlop
World Meteorology Day marks a highly successful collaboration under the World Meteorological Organization, involving every country, large or small, rich or poor. Weather affects every single person (every living being) on the planet, but why do people feel meteorology is not for them? Why do they even find it so difficult to identify different types of cloud? Or at least they claim that it is difficult. The average person, it would seem, looks at the sky and simply thinks 'clouds'. (Just as they look at the night sky and think nothing more than 'stars').